Last-minute advice sought. Peeping? Air?

[ChibaPet]

We've got six eggs in our new incubator, and funny enough, the one egg we were unsure about right along has peeped at us tonight. Four or five good peeps in a row, and we see the egg shaking a little from time to time. I thought I heard singular peeps earlier, but tonight my daughter ran down and said she heard peeping from an egg.

I went up to the incubator and our questionable egg is definitely not questionable.

But now I'm a little worried and I'd welcome advice. How long will she have air in there once she's started making noises like that? I assume the effort takes a little of her oxygen, but I really don't know how much. We're reading about the notion of a safety hole, but I fear shrinkwrapping.

We haven't managed to hatch chickens yet as our first attempt was with a bad incubator, and reading the "Guide to Assisted Hatching for All Poultry" in here talks about internal pipping, and frankly we don't know what that would even look like.

We'd welcome advice. We don't want to do something that'll reduce her chances, but we also don't want to risk her suffocating. So, how do we know if she's internally pipped? What's it look like? And what are the parameters should guide us with regard to how much air she's got available?

Thank you in advance!

 

[ChibaPet]

Ah, the "definition of zipping and pipping?" post suggests she IS internally pipping. So if I thought I heard something in the afternoon, that means we'll want to probably do a safety air hole around noon or just a bit after. But I'd very much like to hear back from folks in here before we take any action at all.

 

[kattabelly]

If it's peeping then it's pipped internally. Any progress yet?

 

[ChibaPet]

One minichicken decided not to wait for us to wake up. More eggs are rocking and occasionally peeping.

It's hella hard to get out of that egg, so you have to sleep a bunch:

 

[ChibaPet]

But once you're up and about, things change:

 

[ChibaPet]

We needed to mark the airholes earlier - we can't find the airhole on the egg that's most active. One break on the outside, and since we hear her chirping, we're hoping that means she got her airhole and that the break on the outside of the shell means she can get new air. But we're a bit nervous.

 

[ChibaPet]

Alright, our Egg of Concern, #4, has shown us her beak, so she can get air. And we've seen at least one other beak. This is earlier than we'd figured so the quiet eggs aren't yet a concern. We saw movement in all of them before lockdown.

 

[ChibaPet]

#4 is breaking more of her egg, and one of the previously-quiet eggs has started rocking. This is vastly different and better than our first run with the cheaper incubator.

Interesting thing is that with this incubator we set it to the desired temperature, but we also had thermometer/agrometer units (three of them) in-between the eggs, and we noticed both that the temperature was universally a couple degrees cooler down where the eggs were, and that it was a bit cooler still at the spot where the waterline comes in to pump humidity. The first chicken to emerge came from near there, too, so evidently it wasn't a big concern

 

[ChibaPet]

Second egg has hatched, no help needed!

 

[ChibaPet]

Three out now. Three more eggs not doing much. These are all supposed to be Rhode Island Reds but clearly something is unusual.